Wedding festivities began on August 3rd, the Wednesday before the wedding, when Tina flew all the way from Florida to spend a few days with me! I picked her up at the Indy airport and drove straight to Farmersburg with Marty McFly (our dog), my dress, both of our luggage, my home-made table numbers, place-card display, and vases for centerpieces. I mean, that car was FULL-O-S*IT. The poor dog was so confused. Memories are already escaping me, but I'm pretty sure Tina had to hold the dog on her lap.
We stayed at my mother-in-law Katrina's house Wednesday and Thursday nights. On Thursday morning, my flowers were delivered around 9 a.m. I ordered all of my flowers from fiftyflowers.com after reading about it on a blog. I can't even remember the quantities of what I ordered, but I got white hydrangeas for the centerpieces, hot pink yves piaget roses for the bridesmaid bouquets, and white garden roses for my bouquet. They arrived in cardboard boxes looking thirsty and sleepy. Tina, Katrina and I worked on opening the boxes, cutting the stems under water and putting them in utility buckets of water that I had picked up from walmart.
They started out looking thirsty and sleepy but after a day they had bloomed to full size and were so gorgeous!
We ended up using 3 hydrangea per centerpiece, 6 hot pink yves piaget for each bridesmaid, and 12 white garden roses for my bouquet. The leftover white roses that I had, I used for the gift table and my place card display.
For the centerpieces, I made my own table numbers.I started with $1 wooden frames from The Dollar Tree (everything's a dollar!!)
and $1 wooden numbers from Michaels
bought some acrylic paint
painted the frames. they were from the dollar store and i have a sneaking suspicion the wood wasn't really wood because it wasn't porous, so it took about 4-5 coats for each frame
painted the numbers
bought a yard of fabric from Joanne's fabric and traced around the glass from the frame so the fabric would wrap around the glass, then hot glued the fabric to the frame.
put the fabric/glass back in the frame
hot glued the number onto the frame. and voila!!
On Friday after our rehearsal we went back to my hotel room and my bridesmaids surprised me with some fun gifts and a suddenly decorated room!
Then we spent some time putting together our bouquets for the next day. I must admit I didn't really have a good plan for keeping the bouquets together once they were assembled. I knew I could use a rubberband to fasten them and then wrap it with ribbon, but wasn't sure how to keep the ribbon on. Luckily, I have resourceful bridesmaids who used my mini hot glue gun to get it done! I was happy I decided to take my trusty glue gun with me on the road.
I was feeling a bit stressed out at this point about all the DIY that I had for some reason decided to do for this wedding and so I talked my bridesmaids into going out for a drink or two at a place across the street from the hotel where some of my family/friends, future husband and groomsmen had decided to go. I soon returned in an attempt to sleep. I shared a room with my bridesmaid Julie who snored and so unfortunately I slept very little the night before our wedding!
I woke up at 6 in order to get to the reception hall by 7 to decorate.
we left the hotel, grabbed some breakfast on the way and made it to the reception venue by 7 to decorate. After a small misunderstanding (nobody was there to unlock the doors despite being told beforehand they would be ready for us at 7 a.m.) My mom, Katrina, and bridesmaids set up the centerpieces while I went to work on my escort card table.
This was another DIY project of mine that I became obsessed with. I wanted a kind of vintage-y classic feel and so I shopped around at about 10 Goodwill stores to find silver or gold platters, glass cake stands or trays, etc. I found a good mix of such and played around with designing the table at home. I made an outline of the size of the table on my floor and set up the trays, printed our escort cards on my printer, and arranged them alphabetically. I took a few votive candles and tossed them on there too. And then took 3 bud vases from, you guessed it, Goodwill and put them along the back. In the below picture there are fake sunflowers in the vases because that's what I had at home at the time, but at the wedding I used 3 white roses that were left over for my bouquet. Also, in the pic below I was in the middle of doing laundry and had no sheets on my bed.
And here's a picture of part of it from the wedding. Unfortunately I don't have any pics of it all set up at the wedding. By the time my photographer got there, of course most of the guests had come and taken their card away. So there is no complete picture. I think it was cool though.
We went off to our hair appointment at 9 a.m. followed by make-up at the hotel at 12. Then it was a lot of waiting around. Our limo was supposed to pick us up at the hotel at 3 p.m. He was LATE. Grrrrr. Talk about stress. And the air conditioning was broken in the limo too.
We got to the chapel, waited for the boys, who were LATE. Justin and I did our first look pics. Then we did bridal party and family pics. It was so hot outside I was literally melting.
We set up my "guest book" and sand ceremony stuff. I didn't want a guest book so opted to have a kind of address book box that I found on etsy. It looked kind of like a recipe box, but each card had a place for name, address, email, etc. with a spot on the bottom to write well wishes.
We didn't originally want to do any kind of sand or candle ceremony, but we definitely really wanted Justin's stepmom Adele to sing at our wedding because she has a beautiful voice. Because of that, we needed to do something during the ceremony that would allow time for her to sing. I didn't want to pay the 40 or 50 ridiculous dollars for a sand ceremony kit, and so I made my own with bud vases from Goodwill and sand from Michaels.
You can kind of see the vases up there.
My programs I also designed and printed myself just using the pages program on my Mac. I downloaded some fun fonts from dafont.com and inserted shapes to make the little circle designs.
I loved seeing pictures from the wedding because I was in the back the whole time waiting and didn't see the girls at all as they passed out the programs. They ended up putting the ribbon over their heads and wearing the baskets around their neck. ADORABLE!
It took me FOREVER to decide on music for our ceremony. I really, really didn't want traditional instrumental music. I also knew I couldn't do something too cheesy because my husband would never allow it. I ended up using the song "Heavenly Day" by Patty Griffin for my bridesmaid's processional. I just love how happy the song is and I think it fit the mood perfectly. Plus, the chapel is amazingly beautiful and airy and open and it felt like the most perfect day inside of there!
I walked down the aisle to "Songbird" by Fleetwood Mac. But I used the version by Naya Rivera. Yes, it's from the show Glee. But that's not why I chose it. I just felt like the version was more simple and sweet and it fit perfectly with the previous song by Patty Griffin.
I love the lyrics to Songbird and always have. I think it's perfect for walking toward your future husband! I had it worked out so that the song stopped right after she sings "And I love you I love you I love you like never before". By that time, I had made my way up to the front.
We had Adele sing "Grow Old With Me" by John Lennon during the sand ceremony and it was beautiful!
My dress was Enzoani Dakota which is a mermaid style alcenon lace. I added a crystal sash.
I happened to find shoes that matched my sash perfectly! This is the only pic I have of my shoes though. It's from the day I bought them so I could send a pic to my mom.
Our cake was done by my sister-in-law Taryn and everyone talked about how delicious it was! I loved it! We got a traditional bride and groom cake topper.
Our first dance was to the song "First Day of my Life" by Bright Eyes. Our song!
Lots of awesome dancing ensued! Before I knew it the day was over and it was time to clean up! Then Justin and I headed back to my father-in-law's house, opened some presents and left for the airport in Indy. Our flight departed at 5:30 a.m., so no, we didn't even sleep on our wedding night! Straight to the airport!
But the Cayman Islands was well worth it!
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